A Connecticut judge brushed off an attempt by the state to fine a Florida firearms manufacturer nearly $7.7 million for operating a website.
Democratic Connecticut Attorney General William Tong announced he was suing four companies, including Indie Guns, an Orlando, Florida-based firearms manufacturer, over the sale of so-called "ghost guns." Judge Daniel J. Klau wrote in a 51-page opinion that while the state had proven the company had sold at least one "80% receiver" (an unfinished receiver that can be completed at home) to someone in Connecticut, its demand for a $5,000 fine for each day the company's site was active did not stand up to scrutiny. (RELATED: Semiautomatic Firearms Selling Like Hotcakes As Gun Owners Try To Beat Clock On Dems' Licensing Scheme)
"The attorney general has the legal authority to sue foreign companies for violating [the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act (CUTPA)] violations if they violate a criminal statute by, as in this case, selling, delivering or otherwise transferring illegal gun parts to Connecticut residents," Klau wrote, but he observed that Indie Guns' actions were legal in Florida and the company wasn't
The Senate released a plan Friday to debate and vote on a massive package of bills before exiting for August recess.
Leadership outlined a plan for voting on several bills and exiting for recess, which included voting on a continuing resolution (CR), confirming acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and passing a voter identification bill introduced by Republican Ohio Sen. Jon Husted.
Senators had until 3:25 p.m. EDT to object. If any objections were made, leadership would not have unanimous consent, but could still follow through with their plan. The chamber will likely be voting throughout the night and into the early hours of Saturday morning. (RELATED: Senate Passes Lindsey Graham's Neocon-Backed Bill Targeting Russia)
NEWS — Senate GOP leaders just hotlined an agreement to finish up & get the heck outta here
— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) August 7, 2026
Endgame near??? pic.twitter.com/ROsqDhqPgP
The CR would fund the federal government through Dec. 11 and prevent a shutdown. The upper chamber will also vote on Republican North Carolina Sen. Ted Budd's amendment that would strip a CR provision delaying
The Senate confirmed acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to be the next attorney general after holdouts threatened his nomination process.
The upper chamber confirmed Blanche 50-49, with every Democrat and two Republicans, Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, voting against him. Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis had been hesitant to support Blanche over a $1.8 billion anti-weaponization package, though they later reached a deal with Blanche and voted to advance his nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Cornyn and Tillis demanded that the Department of Justice (DOJ) provide written proof that the fund was rescinded and rewrite language in an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) settlement to ensure that audit immunity for President Donald Trump and his family did not extend beyond the plaintiffs. The DOJ sent a written proposal to Cornyn on July 27, though Cornyn returned it and argued they had not met his demands. (RELATED: Trump AG Nominee's Confirmation In Limbo)
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley scheduled the markup for July 30, though he postponed it because Cornyn
The Senate passed a continuing resolution (CR) early Saturday to fund the government without addressing the national debt.
The CR would fund the government through Dec. 11 to avoid a government shutdown ahead of the midterm elections. The funding bill extends current funding levels rather than addressing the national debt, which amounts to approximately $39.8 trillion.
The House passed its own version of a CR on July 21 in a 220 to 205 vote, which would fund the government until Dec. 4.
The Senate voted to invoke cloture on the CR in a 91 to 6 vote, which limited debate so the floor could eventually vote on final passage. Republican Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Democratic Massachusetts Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine voted against the motion.
The final vote on the CR was 90-6, as South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham voted "present" because it included a death benefit to the heir of her brother, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham.
The legislation is a standard stopgap measure
Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed will have to win the support of non-college-educated, lower-income and non-white voters in the Michigan Senate race, after struggling to make inroads with that demographic in Tuesday's Senate primary.
El-Sayed narrowly won the primary 48.5% to 47.5% against Democratic Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens. The further-left candidate will need to better appeal to non-college-educated and lower-to-middle income voters to be competitive against former Republican Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers in November.
Stevens won more than 50% of the vote in counties where less than 30% had a college education, according to Politico. El-Sayed won nearly 60% of the vote in counties where at least 30% of residents held a bachelor's degree.
El-Sayed won in Ottawa County and Allegan County, where median household incomes were $90,502 and $83,000 per year, respectively, according to the Census. Ogemaw County and Roscommon County, where Stevens won by nearly 30 points, had median household incomes of $54,000 and $55,000 per year, respectively, according to the counties' censuses.
A federal judge's decision that the National Firearms Act (NFA) no longer applies to suppressors and other items whose taxes were reduced to $0 in July 2025 could open a path to end a 40-year-old ban on new civilian machine gun sales.
In the 66-page opinion, United States District Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the Northern District of Texas, a Trump appointee, said that because taxes on suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns and other items had been reduced to $0 by legislation signed by President Donald Trump in July 2025, the registration and paperwork imposed by the NFA exceeded Congress' authority under the taxation power. Republican Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert introduced H.R. 8921 on May 20, which would remove the $200 transfer tax on machine guns and "destructive devices," potentially leading to the demise of registration requirements for machine guns and possibly the Hughes Amendment as well. (RELATED: Piece Of Red Tape That's Tied Up Gun Owners For Decades Finally Gets Cut In Court)
"I believe that if they got rid of the tax, under the logic of this ruling, let's assume
The Pentagon stripped former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall of his security clearance Friday, accusing him of handing a reporter classified details about Air Force One.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced the decision on X, saying the Department of War had canceled Kendall's eligibility to view classified material and his ability to fill any sensitive role. Parnell tied the move to what he called an unauthorized disclosure about the aircraft's capabilities. "Safeguarding classified information is a non-negotiable duty," he wrote. Parnell never identified which news organization received the information, and he offered no word on whether Kendall would face prosecution, according to the Associated Press (AP). (RELATED: Former Pentagon Aide Hired To Intelligence Role After Leak Probe)
Effective immediately, the Department of War has REVOKED former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall’s eligibility for access to classified information and his ability to hold any sensitive position.
— Sean Parnell (@SeanParnellASW) August 7, 2026
This action follows his unauthorized disclosure of classified information…
Kendall rejected the accusation outright. He told
ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith unloaded on Dr. Anthony Fauci, demanding public accountability for pandemic guidance that he says nearly cost him his life.
Smith stopped short of calling for prison time in a video posted to his X account. He argued instead that the former health official deserved public shame.
"I don't believe this man at 85 years of age should be thrown in jail," Smith said in the video. "But do I think that he should be embarrassed for the self-adulation that he engaged in? You damn right I do." (RELATED: Anthony Fauci Pleads The Fifth During Highly Anticipated Hearing)
I Almost Died! pic.twitter.com/zsG9y7Xgx8
— Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) August 6, 2026
Smith questioned whether the recommendations Americans followed ever rested on solid footing. He said some of Fauci's instructions ran counter to science even as Fauci presented them as science-driven, faulting mask requirements, six-foot distancing rules and the shuttering of businesses forced to enforce mandates.
The commentator then recounted his own ordeal. "I took
Multiple leading artificial intelligence (AI) models continue to break containment during safety testing.
Meta became the third major AI company whose models have gone rogue. Its AI hacked into another company's systems during cybersecurity testing, CNN reported. AI safety experts argue that this incident shows that AI labs cannot control flagship models, while advocates for the technology believe the Trump administration's regulatory framework will mitigate these incidents.
"A misconfiguration by Irregular, an independent testing company Meta uses, inadvertently allowed one of our models access to the internet during evaluation. The model subsequently exploited a security vulnerability in a third-party service, in a manner similar to previously-reported instances with other companies," a Meta spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. "Meta learned of this when Irregular notified us, and we are currently investigating and will issue a full retrospective once we have all the facts."
Irregular, a third-party AI testing startup, said that the cybersecurity breach "is the exact same evaluation-environment issue" that Anthropic disclosed in July that allowed its models to access the internet and hack three separate organizations.
"This
The Senate skipped town Saturday for its August recess without passing President Donald Trump's legislative priority, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act.
Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah, and Rick Scott of Florida stood down from a planned budget resolution for Reconciliation 3.0 after they determined it did not have the votes to pass late Friday, The Hill reported. The Republicans instead secured a vote on a photo ID requirement for federal elections sponsored by Republican Ohio Sen. Jon Husted. That measure, however, was opposed by every Democrat, receiving 52 of the 60 votes needed to advance.
"Obviously, with the president at his direction, this is what he wants to do," Johnson, following a Friday phone conversation those senators had with the president, said, Scripps News reported.
"[The] SAVE America Act is a very important thing," Trump had said in a Thursday interview with Punchbowl News. "John's trying. He's trying hard. I really believe that. But if he doesn't get there, it would be unfortunate."
The postponed $95
Millions of able-bodied American men have stopped working and stopped looking, and two prominent voices spent a Friday night wondering why.
Comedian Bill Maher and "Dirty Jobs" host Mike Rowe traded figures and theories on the labor-force exodus during a segment posted to the YouTube channel for "Real Time with Bill Maher." Maher put the count at roughly 7 million men, mostly young, who fall into a category economists label NILF, short for not in the labor force. He drew the line between that group and the unemployed, noting that jobless workers at least keep hunting for a paycheck while these men have quit the search entirely.
Rowe fixed the number at close to 6,990,000 and called the trend unprecedented outside of wartime. He pinned much of the trouble on a college system that saddled graduates with debt while leaving skilled work undone. Student loans have swelled to $1.8 trillion, Rowe said on the program, up from $1.1 trillion when he last appeared. He counted about 400,000 open construction jobs and twice that figure across the defense industrial
Nevada rancher Adrienne Snow remembers riding horseback across the high desert as military helicopters thundered overhead.
"You could just bottle up what being an American feels like: to be on a horse with military helicopters flying over you and listening to the national anthem from 'Top Gun,'" Snow told the Daily Caller. "There's nothing like it."
For decades, ranching families in Churchill County raised cattle as military aircraft from Naval Air Station Fallon, home to the Navy's elite TOPGUN program, trained overhead.
Now, Snow and eight other ranching families say the Navy's massive expansion of the Fallon Range Training Complex could destroy operations that have survived for generations — while paying them only a fraction of what their losses are worth.
The ranchers are raising a troubling allegation: that federal officials are disregarding agricultural valuation systems created by the federal government itself when determining how much affected families should be paid. The Navy has offered the Snow family $1.48 million for losses projected over 100 years, even though a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) methodology cited by the family places the annual value of its forage alone at roughly $815,000.
At the center of the
